The ref, in case you’ve been wondering, will be Michael Oliver.
Teams: Burnley
Burnley are on what passes for a roll at the bottom of the Premier League, so they stick with a winning team – apart from Connor Roberts, whose slot at right-back goes to Matt Lowton. There’s still no room for Dwight McNeil, though I suspect he’ll soon be warming up.
Burnley (4-4-2) Pope; Lowton, Collins, Tarkowski, Taylor; Lennon, Westwood, Brownhill, Cornet; Weghorst, Rodriguez.
Subs: Hennessey, Long, Roberts, Thomas, Stephens, McNeil, Cork, Barnes, Vydra.
Teams: Norwich
No Billy Gilmour for Norwich, who may be playing a midfield diamond and giving Burnley a dose of their own medicine with twin strikers.
Norwich (4-D-2?) Krul; Byram, Hanley, Gibson, Giannoulis; Normann, Dowell, Lees-Melou, McLean; Pukki, Rashica.
Subs: Gunn, Aarons, Williams, Sorensen, Tzolis, Rowe, Springett, Zimmermann, Rupp.
Preamble
Afternoon everyone and welcome to the biggest game of … the next three hours. It may not be quite City-Liverpool, but Norwich-Burnley still gets a high score on a metric that is crying out to be turned into three dimensions by the people behind Wallace & Gromit – the Squeaky Bum-o-Meter.
Burnley badly need three points to keep up with Everton, who sprang a surprise by actually winning a game yesterday. Norwich need three points even more than that: they’re going down unless they go on a glorious run right now, and although they have a winnable game next week – against Ralf Rangnick’s Also-Rans – that one is away, while this is at home.
Both these clubs have spent the past eight months collecting just four league wins. The difference between them is all in the draws: six to Norwich so far, 12 to Burnley. Dean Smith could reasonably claim that his side play the better football, but Sean Dyche has the edge on experience and pragmatism. The other night, against Everton, the football was suddenly decent too, with Maxwel Cornet finding his silver hammer.
It could be a cracker. Kick-off is at 2pm, and I’ll be back soon after 1 with the teams.